“Yet the recent string of ISIS attacks across the Middle East and now in Europe suggests that its aims, and methods, are more complicated. In October a bombing in Ankara that killed 102 people was blamed on ISIS by the Turkish government. A few weeks later, ISIS’s Sinai affiliate claimed to have brought down a Russian airliner, killing 224 people. On November 12, ISIS claimed responsibility for a double-suicide bombing of a busy shopping street in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut that left forty-four people dead. There were bombings in Baghdad. And then there was Paris.”
“In fact none of these targets is random. What they show is that ISIS is now determined to launch attacks against those states that are waging war against it. Turkey has just given the US government permission to use some of its airbases for strikes against ISIS; Hezbollah is helping Bashar al-Assad fight ISIS. The Russians are now bombing ISIS and other groups, while the French are crucial partners in the anti-ISIS coalition. French warplanes bombing ISIS from runways in the Gulf states are about to get a fresh boost as the French government sends its only aircraft carrier to the Gulf.”
“ISIS’s message is thus clear—the group is waging an all-out deliberate war against all those countries that are lining up to fight it.”
“Again, this is not an attempt to take down the Western order, in the way that al-Qaeda was trying to do, nor is it a reaction to the evils of Western heathens. It is a direct reaction to what is being done to ISIS by coalition forces. ISIS is trying to weaken and divide the coalition into those countries that may now act more cautiously or even pull out of the coalition, and those that will stay and will continue to be targeted by ISIS.”
“LET’s most important innovations in jihadi warfare are mass attacks on civilian targets and the strategy of fighting to the death rather than blowing yourself up. Whereas suicide attacks used by other Kashmiri groups fighting the Indian army had become commonplace in the 1990s, LET rejected suicide as anti-Islamic (suicide is specifically condemned in the Koran). Thus LET sieges in which trained extremists attack and fight to the death became common. This was, according to the group, the hallmark of a true Muslim martyr.”
“If there was a risk of being captured alive in such an attack, then a suicide vest could be used, but having proved your valor by first fighting so hard, such suicides could be justified as last resort actions to avoid capture or being forced to disclose information about your comrades. LET militants were trained in siege tactics and holding hostages for propaganda purposes as long as possible. Kalashnikov semi-automatic rifles, grenades, smoke bombs, and pistols became the weapons of choice—tactics that were also used in the Charlie Hebdo massacre and now by ISIS.”
“Much of the rest of the ISIS playbook in Paris—the meticulous planning, the selection of soft targets, the multiple simultaneous attacks by different teams used to create a sense of chaos in the streets, the mayhem created—was inspired by what the LET used in Mumbai. In such attacks nothing is left to chance, nothing is left unplanned.”
“Ever since the Mumbai attacks, European officials have been preparing for an assault like what happened in Paris; and French security forces, despite the intelligence lapse, seem to have responded well in preventing many more killings inside the stadium. British officials, in particular, have said that British Special Forces have also been retrained to be able to better respond to such attacks. ‘Ever since the coordinated firearms attacks in Mumbai in 2008, we have all been working together to ensure we could respond to such an attack,’ Prime Minister David Cameron said following the events in Paris. ‘It is clear that the threat from ISIL is evolving.’”